One of the things I miss most about cable television is C-SPAN. The opportunity to be exposed to thinkers, pundits, books is really incredible. Sure, a lot of dross shows up there. I always enjoyed finding an engaging intellect there. Some time ago C-SPAN started to put more archival video up: C-Span Video Library. Here’s…

Star Wars Uncut: Director’s Cut. Star Wars ’77. Chunked into 15 second segments. Segments claimed by filmmakers, amatuers, animators, goofballs, and then the segments are reassembled into Star Wars. Certain people will find this beautiful, wonderful, incredible. I expect some people won’t be able to watch more than about 6 minutes. I watched the whole…

Water temperature is 62°F (16.7°C). A very nearly perfect break for me. Next: back to life, back to reality. Also: catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world. Related: Charlie don’t surf. However: I bodysurf at the beaches and swim at the cove. This ocean, this coast, this birthright of the citizens…

view this video on Flickr Grandpa: “I pushed down and nothing happened…” Grandma: “Push again!” This is from March 10, 2009. Futzing with the camera to take a photo of the flowers in the front yard, and a perfect microencapsulation of my grandparents and how they worked on things together. My Grandma had a pretty…

Closing Keynote: Vernacular Video by Bruce Sterling on how media morph over time. Chief insight I’ve read before but never heard: to look forward in time, you have to also look twice as far back into the past.

For some reason this video–Fancy by Reba McEntire–has stuck with me as a kitsch cheese masterpiece since I first saw it maybe 20 years ago. The song and I think the video too were released in 1990. It is over-the-top melodrama and until I looked it up, I had no idea it was a cover…

This past weekend Leah and I went down to Blacksburg and attended (most of) the Progeny Film Festival. These were student and community-made films and they showed real promise. I have a soft spot for student film. The Festival was held at The Lyric Theater, which has an interesting history. The film I liked best…